I’m off!  For 8 months…or so.  Off to sail the seas, to work hard, and to hopefully make a few friends and have some great new memories.

In the meantime, enjoy a video of Isak playing my absolute favorite song ever that he’s played…Red Rose Rendevouz, a jazz waltz that is just incredible.  I’m very proud especially since he’s on summer break from lessons and has done this completely on his own.  He has worked very hard to get it put together before I leave and it has left me in tears several times because he plays with such beautiful feeling.

Isak has been super excited about turning 10 years old - he gets an ID card and is able to go to the older kids after-school club.  A new feature of the after-school place is a skate park, and Isak has been talking about wanting to go there.  B had the idea to get him a skateboard - I was not so sure as Isak has inherited my two left feet, but B was sure it was going to be a hit and besides, it would be a good way for him to be active. 

I still wasn’t sure, but when we gave him the first (and as he thought, the only) part of his present - a new helmet and knee/elbow/wrist pads - the first words out of his mouth were “I wish I had a skateboard!”  His face lit up when he got the second half of the present and knew as soon as he saw the wrapped box what it was.

There were some bumps and slips and Isak learned he could almost do the splits, but he had a great time nad is very excited about his new skateboard.

Check out our neighbor’s car - I finally got around to taking a picture of it.  The best part?  I saw the guy driving his car one day and he was wearing a bat mask.  I don’t know if you can make it out but under the bat wings it says “Batmobile” where the make of the car would be, and up in the front over the tire is a batman insignia.

Isak had a few friends over for a sleepover party which was a lot of fun and did not include much sleep.  We made homemade pizzas, had homemade (aka “box mix”) strawberry cake by Isak’s request, watched a movie and played video games until 2am.  Breakfast was biscuits and gravy, eggs and bacon - yum!

The Spanish have a tradition of eating 12 grapes in the first 12 seconds of the year.  From what I’ve heard, each sweet grape is supposed to bring a sweet month and each sour grape is supposed to mean a sour month in that year.  I’m not sure how they can distinguish which grapes are which when you have a huge mouthful, but it’s fun anyways.  At least Isak thought so.

May everyone’s 2009 be happy, healthy, prosperous, and filled with wonderful memories.  Thank you to everyone who’s stuck it through with me this year despite my infrequent blogging - I have informally resolved (formal resolutions only call for failure) to post much more regularly…but with my boring life, we shall see…

If there’s one thing that Isak takes after me, it’s his love of reading. His goal is to read the most this school year, as they’re being challenged to read at least 30 minutes a day. He has surpassed that on his own and is reading anywhere from an hour to 2 hours a night at bedtime. His assigned books are the Goosebumps books, which he’s on the second book now, but additionally, he’s finally gotten confident enough in his reading to tackle Harry Potter. He’s on his second book now, and I’m so excited that he finally gets to experience Harry Potter the way it was meant to be experienced, in book form.

Tonight he started reading without being told and being the mean mom I am, I interrupted him to brush his teeth for bed. I guess the 2nd Goosebumps book is good, because he can’t put it down…literally!

(Click picture to view larger version)

Anja is so much of a lookalike to her father but possesses many similarities to me in her personality - at least as a child.  I promise, I no longer scream at the top of my lungs, usually.  Unless maybe there’s a giant beetle climbing up my blanket very quickly.   Other than her physical feature, that’s the other way I’m significantly different from her - she picked up that same beetle a few days earlier and walked it outside as she told him that her mom really doesn’t like bugs in the house.

However, Isak - he’s my “mini-me” in his looks but his personality is, for the most part, very different from mine.   He gets his coordination (or lack thereof), sensitivity and his inclination toward music (both in playing and in listening) from me.  What he most certainly does NOT get from me is his academic strength.  I never really liked school, except maybe grammar and band.

Today we got a letter from the school reporting a required assessment of his language skills in case he needed extra help in English as he’s from a home with two languages.  How proud was I when I read the recommendation of his gifted education teacher: “Add classroom differentiation to accommodate his high math skills.  He is above grade level in his class work.  He needs time and opportunity to develop creative/critical-thinking skills as he continues in gifted education.”

I’m such a proud mamma!!

Last night during dinner, I asked Isak what he did in school that day.  He said, “We didn’t have reading this morning.  Instead, we had science questions!”  Isak has commented several times to me that they don’t have science in school and he really wishes they did, so I knew this would be a lot of fun for him.  Science.  I hated science.

“My question was, ‘Is Antarctica colder than Iceland?’”

“And?  What did you find out?”

“Antarctica IS colder than Iceland.”

“Well, how do you know that?”

“Because Iceland is kept warm by the Gulf Stream from the Gulf of Mexico.”

Blink blink.

“Uhhh.  Wow!  Did you read that in a book?”

“No, I Googled it.”

Back when I was a kid, we had to go to the library! And look up our answers in encyclopedias!  Using the Dewey Decimal System!  And walk backward, uphill, both ways in the snow!  With no shoes!